Agilent/Beiming 82357 USB GPIB support for OSX

[davorin]

Those who use OSX know that since a while the Agilent 82357 USB GPIB adapters, or the ones from Beiming, are not supported anymore due to the lack of 32Bit support under OSX....

Currently I also use Linux for controlling my devices over GPIB, but from time to time I would like to use OSX for it, especially for documentation purposes.

There are two ways to do it....

Either develop a installable USB driver, which makes so far no sense for me as I don't have any application which uses the original Agilent driver, like LabView...

Develop sample applications using direct IOKit USB calls similar to the Linux 82357a kernel driver...

[davorin]

Seems there are just two people using OSX besides me (o;

[Guile]

Hi,
I'm an electronic engineer living in France and I'm happy to join this forum

We're now almost 3 years after your first post and there is still no support for 82357 on OSX.

Thus I've started to "port" linux-gpib" to mac os x (for now it's 10.12 but I'm targeting compatibility with 10.6) and I've now a running version. It's not a driver/pilot (i.e. not a kernel extension) but a library which can be linked to any application specifically designed for.
Linking a library is not that easy for a lambda user, thus I'm working now on the Python integration. In the meantime I've learnt that Pyvisa-py is integrating support on "linux-gpib" python wrapper. Thus I'm writing my library and Python wrapper to keep this compatibility.

Once ready I'll submit the code, the library package and instructions on source forge. Perhaps in September or October 2017.
Now I've 1 question: Is someone interested to help me to debug my code and test with its own interface?
My library only focuses on Agilent 82357A and 82357B for now as it looks like that other usb interfaces are officially supported by their vendor on OSX.
Cheers

[davorin]

Well I've giving up using Beiming adapters and sold them....they were not that reliable as using a PCI GPIB card....

* davorin working on networking version of linux-gpib (o;

[Guile]

Thanks Davorin!
Could you explain what a networking version of linux-gpib is? Are you using PHP?
Once I'll finish my library and Python wrapper I'll see if I submit it or keep it for my personal use as there is indeed not that much people interested with
Cheers

[Guile]

Hi All,

Finally I did it and I've submitted macosx_gpib_lib 1.0.0 to sourceforge.
Here is the link:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/macosx-gpib-lib/?source=directory

macosx_gpib_lib is not a kernel extension and uses Cocoa library while linux-gpib uses low level functions. Hence the performance might not be as good as linux-gpib but at least it works and I hope hobbyist like me will enjoy!
Just let me know if it has helped you!! I've added a Python wrapper to use it but you can write your own wrapper as macosx_gpib_lib is a dynamic library.

Guile

[Tantratron]

Bonjour Guile,

Just found your thread and maybe you have some ideas or comments on this one https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/gpib-usb-control-between-macbook-air-(macintosh)-and-tds540c/ where it is based on MacOS with National Instruments

Happy New Year, Albert

[Guile]

Bonjour Albert,

Happy New Year to you as well! Sorry for the late reply but I haven't checked my emails for a while.
I had a quick view on the thread your mentioned. You seem to have progressed well isn't it?

Cheers,

Guile